Breakfast with Puheenvuoro

An interview with Hannes Vartiainen, co-director of Puheenvuoro

 Why did you want to shoot a City Council session?
We didn’t actually shoot it. We ripped it from YouTube – the city council of Tampere streams all of its sessions. We were doing research for another film and we stumbled upon this discussion. It didn’t fit the other project, but we felt there was something special in this discussion, so we decided to make an independent film out of the footage. The discussion was completely irrational – the sad thing is that the people of Tampere actually voted for these people to represent themselves in the municipal administration.

 Are you interested in verbal jousting matches and will you make further films on this theme?
We might make a short sequel when the tram is finally operational (they decided to build it). It would be great to replicate L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat with the first tram arriving at downtown Tampere. We’ll see.

 What sort of freedom would you say the short format allows? 
We have been making short films for the past ten years. Never did a feature so it’s not possible to make a personal comparison, but there is definitely a lot of freedom when making short films. This particular film was made rather quickly without any financing so we didn’t have any constraints.

 If you’ve already been to Clermont-Ferrand, could you share with us an anecdote or story from the festival? If not, what are your expectations for this year?
We attended Clermont-Ferrand four times. Our past films were screened in the Lab Competition – this is our first time in the International Competition. Unfortunately, we will not be able to attend this year – we will be shooting our next film during the festival dates. Our first trip to Clermont-Ferrand was in 2010. We had been travelling with our first film Hanasaari A quite a bit in 2009, making many friends along the way. It was quite a blast to see so many of them in C-F.
For a film maker, Clermont-Ferrand is special – many packed screenings, great Q&A’s, good talks and parties!

Puheenvuoro is being shown in International Competition I8.